AppSettings v1.26

Welcome to AppSettings, a collection of freeware C++ classes to encapsulate reading and writing application configuration settings.  The supported output formats are:

• Per user in the Registry (HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\"Company Name"\"Product Name"\"Product Version") via the class CHKCUAppSettings
• Per machine in the Registry (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\"Company Name"\"Product Name"\"Product Version") via the class CHKLMAppSettings
• Service parameters in the registry (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\"Service Name"\Parameters) via the class CServicesAppSettings. This means that you can use this class in conjunction with the author's own CNTService class framework in preference to the functions for configuration settings provided by that framework.
• A standard windows ini file via the class CIniAppSettings
• An XML file via the class CXMLAppSettings. Internally this class uses the MSXML parser to create and parse the XML.
• A JSON file via the class CJSONAppSettings. Internally this class uses the JSON++ library of the author to create and parse the JSON.

The ini, xml and json file locations can be:

• A per user roaming file stored in "c:\users\<User Name>\Application Data\"Company Name"\"Product Name"\"Product Version" via the method CIniAppSettings::GetRoamingDataFileLocation.
• A per user non-roaming file normally stored in "c:\users\<User Name>\Local Settings\Application Data\"Company Name"\"Product Name"\"Product Version" via the method CIniAppSettings::GetNonRoamingDataFileLocation.
• A per computer (non-user specific and non-roaming) file stored in "c:\users\All Users\Application Data\"Company Name"\"Product Name"\"Product Version" via the method CIniAppSettings::GetPerComputerDataFileLocation.
• A file in the same directory as the current process via the method CIniAppSettings::GetCurrentProcessIniFileLocation. Note, that using this location for an ini or xml file is not a good idea for security reasons.
• Any other location via a call to CIniAppSettings::SetIniFile, CXMLAppSettings::SetXMLFile or CJSONAppSettings::SetJSONFile.

Features

• 6 different output formats are supported as mentioned above.
• To keep the API's as consistent as possible between each of the 5 main classes, they all implement a COM like interface called "IAppSettings". This concept is similar to a COM or .NET interface and allows you to easily swap the output formats without having to rewrite your Get... / Write... code. The API consists of the functions defined in the IAppSettings virtual base class in AppSettings.h"
• The API's are loosely based on the persistence functions built into MFC's CWinApp class which support the HKCU registry and simple ini files. Changing your code to support AppSettings should be relatively simply. You then quickly gain output format independence and easy access to the locations which MS considers best practice for application settings.
• The classes hides the low level details of manipulating an XML DOM if all you want in your XML file is some simple application settings.
• Works equally well in Unicode as well as ASCII builds.
• The classes make use of exceptions to report errors to help client code which is developed to be as robust as possible.
• The registry, XML and JSON output format can also be optionally flushed upon a write or left to be lazy written.
• The xml output format can be optionally "pretty printed".
• Unlike the MFC CWinApp persistence functions, these classes throw exceptions when a value is not located. This allows you to easily distinguish from when a configuration setting is present and is the default value and when it is not present. Your client code should expect these unexpected conditions and handle them by catching the "CAppSettingsException*\CAppSettingsException&" exceptions which are throw in these cases.

Copyright

• You are allowed to include the source code in any product (commercial, shareware, freeware or otherwise) when your product is released in binary form.
• You are allowed to modify the source code in any way you want except you cannot modify the copyright details at the top of each module.
• If you want to distribute source code with your application, then you are only allowed to distribute versions released by the author. This is to maintain a single distribution point for the source code.

Usage

• To use the classes in your code simply add the AppSettings.h file to your project.
• You will also need to add ATL support to your project (simple add atlbase.h to your stdafx.h if your project is currently an MFC only project). This is because the XML app settings class uses the "CComPtr" class to wrap access to the raw MSXML interfaces.
• If you want to provide for the JSON functionality in AppSettings, then you should download the JSON++ library from http://www.naughter.com/jsonpp.html and drop the JSON++.h file into the same directory as AppSettings.h. To enable the JSON functionality you need to define CAPPSETTINGS_JSON_SUPPORT to activate this functionality. Please note that the JSON functionality requires VC 2013 or later.
• To see the classes in action, have a look at the code in TestAppSettings.cpp which exercises all of the classes and their methods.
• As of v1.18, the code is now for Visual C++ 2017 or later.
• Please note that since the JSON++ library which the code uses requires C++ 17 compilation, the AppSettings classes also require C++ 17 compilation.

History

v1.26 (3 October 2023)

• Optimized construction of various std::vector and std::[w]string instances throughout the codebase.

v1.25 (14 May 2023)

• Updated copyright details
• Updated module to indicate that it needs to be compiled using /std:c++17. Thanks to Martin Richter for reporting this issue.

v1.24 (30 January 2022)

• Updated copyright details.
• Fixed more static code analysis warnings in Visual Studio 2022.
• Updated the code to use C++ uniform initialization for all variable declarations.

v1.23 (17 March 2020)

• Updated copyright details.
• Fixed more Clang-Tidy static code analysis warnings in the code.

v1.22 (27 November 2019)

• Changed the default parameter lpszDefault in IAppSettings::GetProfileString from nullptr to _T(""). This avoids problems where the default value is actually returned from this method. Thanks to Rene M. Laviolette for reporting this bug.

v1.21 (26 May 2019)

• Removed the String CAppSettingsException::GetErrorMessage method. This avoids compile problems when the code is compiled in a project which is not using C++ 17.
• Fixed up other compile problems in the module when the code is compiled in a project which is not using C++ 17.

v1.20 (22 April 2019)

• Updated copyright details
• Updated the code to clean compile on VC 2019

v1.19 (2 September 2018)

• Fixed a number of compiler warnings when using VS 2017 15.8.2
• Updated the code to work with the latest version of JSON++

v1.18 (29 July 2018)

• Updated copyright details.
• Fixed a number of C++ core guidelines compiler warnings. These changes mean that the code will now only compile on VC 2017 or later.
• Removed code path which supported CAPPSETTINGS_MFC_EXTENSIONS define
• Reworked the various GetBinary methods to use a std::vector<BYTE> parameter or return value.
• Reworked the various GetSections methods to return a std::vector<String>
• Reworked the various GetSection methods to return a std::vector<String>
• Reworked all usage of ATL::CHeapPtr to now use std::vector<BYTE>
• Replaced BOOL throughout the codebase with bool.

v1.17 (21 December 2017)

• Added code to CJSONAppSettings::GetInt to validate the JSON data type.
• Added code to CJSONAppSettings::GetString to validate the JSON data type.
• Added code to CJSONAppSettings::GetDocumentNode to validate the JSON data type.
• Added code to CJSONAppSettings::GetSectionNode to validate the JSON data type.
• CJSONAppSettings::WriteInt now writes the integer value out as a JSON number.

v1.16 (20 December 2017)

• Added support for JSON output via the author's JSON++ classes.

v1.15 (25 November 2017)

• Updated the code to compile cleanly when _ATL_NO_AUTOMATIC_NAMESPACE is defined.

v1.14 (21 September 2017)

• Replaced CString::operator LPC*STR() calls throughout the codebase with CString::GetString calls
• Replaced NULL throughout the codebase with nullptr. This means that the minimum requirement for the framework is now VC 2010.
• Replaced LONG with LSTATUS for all registry return values throughout the codebase.

v1.13 (21 March 2017)

• Updated copyright details.
• Updated the code to compile cleanly on VC 2017

v1.12 (2 January 2016)

• Updated copyright details.
• The code now uses wostringstream and ostringstream instead of wstringstream and stringstream.

v1.11 (13 December 2015)

• Optimized usage of ATL::CW2T calls in Unicode builds

v1.10 (12 December 2015)

• Verified code compiles cleanly in VC 2015.
• Added SAL annotations to all the code.
• CRegistryAppSettings::GetInt now throws an exception if the returned data type from the registry is not REG_DWORD.
• CRegistryAppSettings::GetString now throws an exception if the returned data type from the registry is not REG_SZ.
• CRegistryAppSettings::GetBinary now throws an exception if the returned data type from the registry is not REG_BINARY.
• CRegistryAppSettings::GetStringArrayFromRegistry now throws an exception if the returned data type from the registry is not REG_MULTI_SZ.
• CIniAppSettings::GetBinary now throws an exception if the returned data length is not even (a requirement because of how the data is written to the ini files by WriteBinary).
• Fixed an issue in CIniAppSettings::GetStringArray when a empty BLOB was returned from GetBinary.
• CXMLAppSettings::GetBinary now throws an exception if the returned data length is not even (a requirement because of how the data is written to the ini files by WriteBinary).
• Reworked the pretty print support for MSXML to use SAX writer instead of writing text nodes directly.
• CRegistryAppSettings::GetString now handles non null terminated data as returned from the registry.
• Updated CRegistryAppSettings::GetSection to handle value name lengths > 4096.
• Updated CRegistryAppSettings::GetStringArrayFromRegistry now handles non doubly null terminated data as returned from the registry.
• Fixed a bug in CRegistryAppSettings::SetStringArrayIntoRegistry where the code would not correctly set the cbData parameter when calling the RegSetValueEx API when compiled in UNICODE mode.
• Reworked the classes to optionally compile without MFC. By default the classes now use STL classes and idioms but if you define CAPPSETTINGS_MFC_EXTENSIONS the classes will revert back to the MFC behaviour.

v1.09 (4 January 2015)

• Updated copyright details.
• Updated the code to clean compile in VC 2010 - VC 2013.

v1.08 (19 March 2009)

• Updated copyright details.
• Updated the sample app solution settings to use more reasonable defaults
• The IAppSettings interface now supports a new GetSections method. This returns all the root sections which a configuration file has. Thanks to Rolf Kristensen for prompting this nice addition to the classes.
• Updated the IAppSettings::GetSection method to support a boolean "bWithValues" parameter which determines if the returned string array should or should name include the values. This allows client code to easily get all the sections names. Thanks to Rolf Kristensen for providing this nice addition to the classes.
• Reworked most of the internal code which does heap allocations using "new" to instead now use ATL::CHeapPtr.

v1.07 (6 June 2008)

• Updated copyright details.
• Updated sample app to clean compile on VC 2008
• The code has now been updated to support VC 2005 or later only.
• Code now compiles cleanly using Code Analysis (/analyze)

v1.06 (28 December 2007)

• CAppSettingsException::GetErrorMessage now uses Checked::tcsncpy_s if compiled using VC 2005 or later.

v1.05 (24 December 2007)

• CAppSettingsException::GetErrorMessage now uses the FORMAT_MESSAGE_IGNORE_INSERTS flag. For more information please see Raymond Chen's blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2007/11/28/6564257.aspx. Thanks to Alexey Kuznetsov for reporting this issue.
• Minor update to display HRESULT's correctly.

v1.04 (5 July 2007)

• Added support for "Pretty Printing" to the CXMLAppSettings class. This is achieved through an additional parameter to the constructor.

v1.03 (6 January 2007)

• Updated copyright details.
• Fixed a bug in CRegistryAppSettings::SetStringArrayIntoRegistry related to use of _tcscpy_s
• Fixed a bug in CIniAppSettings::WriteStringArray related to use of _tcscpy_s
• Fixed a bug in CXMLAppSettings::WriteStringArray related to use of _tcscpy_s

v1.02 (19 August 2006)

• Fixed compile problems when code is compiled in a mixed MFC / ATL project.
• Addition of "WriteProfile..." functions to IAppSettings which provides similiar functionality to the MFC CWinApp functions of the same name. These new functions allow you to ignore errors reading a value and instead return a default value.
• Removed the MFC C++ runtime macros from CAppSettingsException as they were not really required.

v1.01 (29 July 2006)

• All AppSettings classes now support "GetSection" and "WriteSection" methods. These new functions are modelled on the "GetPrivateProfileSection" and "WritePrivateProfileSection" Win32 API calls. Thanks to Brad Bruce for suggesting these updates.
• Made the AfxThrowWin32AppSettingsException function a member of IAppSettings and renamed it to ThrowWin32AppSettingsException
• Made the AfxThrowCOMAppSettingsException function a member of IAppSettings and renamed it to ThrowCOMAppSettingsException
• Code now uses newer C++ style casts instead of C style casts.
• Made all the WriteBinary methods now accept a const BYTE* parameter instead of LPBYTE
• Updated the code to clean compile on VC 2005
• Fixed a bug in CXMLAppSettings::GetBinary where returned binary data was being returned incorrectly.

v1.0 (11 June 2006)

• Initial public release.

Contacting the Author

PJ Naughter
Email: pjna@naughter.com
Web: http://www.naughter.com
3 October 2023